UC students awarded prestigious global fellowships

After graduating high school in rural northern Ohio, Solomon Carr didn’t immediately enter academia and worked a few blue-collar jobs. Growing up, he loved to read “One Thousand and One Nights” among other works of classical literature and mythology. Through his teen years, Carr was captivated by social media depictions of Arabic calligraphy and spoken Arabic tutorials online.

After completing an associate degree program, Carr transferred to UC to pursue a bachelor's degree in Arabic language and culture.

“It was a combination of interests, because I would read stories of antiquity and I was living in a community that placed a good deal of significance on this language. It seemed like a very ancient yet alive type of language,” Carr said.

The Critical Language Scholarship will give him the opportunity to travel internationally for the first time and further pursue his studies in Amman, Jordan. The CLS program promotes rapid language gains and essential intercultural fluency.

Carr will spend his three-month experience practicing Arabic, but he is most excited to immerse himself in the culture. He hopes to use his experience to one day be a translator and perhaps pursue more education beyond a bachelor's degree.

“I hope that [the experience] will help in whatever capacity to increase communication and understanding between our very different cultures,” Carr said. 

This spring’s Boren Scholar Evan Lindenberg traced his interests in other cultures to his experiences with the US military.

Lindenberg is a mathematics major at UC, and outside of school, he is actively involved in UC’s Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC). Through the ROTC, he participated in a scholarship program called Project GO, which offered critical language study overseas, including Arabic, Russian and Chinese. Lindenberg chose Arabic and was able to study the language in Jordan.

“I found this passion for language, and I was super intrigued to go back to the Middle East and continue my learning,” he said. “I started looking for opportunities and I found out about the Boren scholarship.”

With the help of some foreign service officer mentors, he tied his interests to his national service and created a winning application which detailed how he would use language in his profession.

“I saw that I received the scholarship, and I was ecstatic because this is a huge opportunity, this was something I’ve been thinking about doing for months on end,” Lindenberg said.

Lindenberg will travel to Amman, Jordan where he will develop valuable skills through learning Arabic in a rich culture overseas. After graduation, he hopes to be commissioned into the Air Force as a foreign service officer.

A long-time lover of Korean culture and history, Carrie Vennefron will cap her multiple UC degrees with a stint as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in South Korea.

In 2020, Vennefron received her undergraduate degree in chemical engineering with a minor in chemistry and a pre-med certificate. Graduating into a pandemic caused her to get creative with her career path and look for unique opportunities.

Vennefron leveraged collegiate work as a teaching assistant for first-year engineering courses to move into software development for a company contracted with the US Department of Defense. She was simultaneously accepted into the business analytics master’s program at UC. But her experiences mentoring students ultimately sparked her curiosity in teaching, particularly on crossing cultural barriers.

“When I did some investigative research on becoming an English teacher in South Korea, blending those passions of being a mentor and also being interested in cultural exchange, there were a lot of different programs available to me,” she said.

Vennefron ultimately decided to apply to Fulbright, a program where she will take on the role of a cultural ambassador. As an awardee, she will help Korean students and faculty to see another side of the U.S. through her lessons, discussions, demeanor and shared experiences.

As an engineer, Vennefron sees the benefits of these multicultural competencies and comprehensive viewpoints.

“I really believe that diversity is a strength,” she said. “Not only diversity of thought, but diversity of upbringing, principles and values really do become relevant in the workplace, community and all aspects of life.”